I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to do, but the problem is that you're trying to return a specific value where the type signature is polymorphic.

getParticleI returns a p, (with the constraint that  p is a type in the class Particle)
This means that getParticleI can be called in any context that needs a Particle p, but your getParticleI returns (Double, Double, Double) so it would only work in a context that needed a (Double, Double, Double), and the type signature doesn't reflect that, so you get an error.

To emphasize the problem, say I make a ParticleD
type ParticleD  =  (Int, Int)
instance Particle ParticleD

let (a, b) = getParticleI myConfig 5 -- this is perfectly valid since ParticleD is a Particle, but doesn't work with your getParticleI definition because it returns a specific type (Double, Double, Double).
Do you see what I mean?

You can fix it by either fixing the type of getParticleI:
getParticleI :: c -> Int -> ParticleC

or by using multiparameter type classes

class Configuration c p where
   getParticleI :: (Particle p) => c -> Int -> p

depending on what you're actually trying to do.

- Job


On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 2:35 AM, Grigory Sarnitskiy <sargrigory@ya.ru> wrote:
Hello! I can't understand why the following dummy example doesn't work.

{-# OPTIONS -XTypeSynonymInstances #-}
{-# OPTIONS -XFlexibleInstances #-}
module Main where
import Data.Array.Unboxed

class Particle p

type ParticleC  =  (Double, Double, Double)
instance Particle ParticleC

class Configuration c where
   getParticleI :: (Particle p) => c -> Int -> p

type Collection p = UArray (Int,Int) Double
instance Configuration (Collection p) where
   getParticleI config i = (1,1,1) :: ParticleC
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